Why use storytelling in Project Management? Storytelling has been a primary form of communications for millennia. With an ever-increasing need for project managers to paint pictures with data and engage stakeholders in a world of change, there has never been a greater need to use storytelling.

This session showcases three speakers, local to the Thames Valley. Each telling a short story, between 5 and 10 minutes, the presentations promise to be highly visual, engaging, and informative on a wide range of topics relating to project management.

Join three locals to the Thames Valley for this quick fire delve into stories of project management, ranging from nuclear robotics to risk management.

We hope this session inspires, enables learning and fun in equal measure.

Speakers and topics being discussed:

Steve Walters
The value of prior learning. Over a long career Steve has found that things learned long ago have a habit of “coming round again”, and projects benefit from prior learning to expedite agile delivery now. In this example, Steve describes how spacecraft and robotics benefit from nuclear (and specifically radiation) technology skills.
Paul Game
Risk management, a short story. Bringing learning from recent master university courses, Paul’s talk will introduce risk management concepts that relate to major projects.
Laura Hartley
Storytelling and neurodivergent communication. While the technical know-how to get a project delivered is clearly irreplaceable, I think soft skills are vastly overlooked! Storytelling has allowed me to reach a common understanding with more people in more teams than any other soft skill I have, save for active listening. Being neurodivergent, communication and influencing is occasionally difficult for me, and framing outputs and the project journey through the lens of a story changed how I managed projects entirely, making our delivery much more successful. This discussion will outline some of the issues we faced, and how storytelling as an art formed the backbone of the project management work we performed. 

For further information and to book your place, please visit the APM website.